An article from 5 days ago showing that there were indeed security concerns before all this went down:
Bunch of Israeli brownshirts cosplaying as football supporters get their asses kicked in Amsterdam.
They cry foul and pretend that them being Jewish had anything to do with anything.
Some of the people doing the kicking chant some nasty shit.
Where does that become “a Pogrom”?
Some observations:
- The Maccabi fans where hardly on their best behavior.
- The Pro-Palistinian protestesters and F-Side really shouldn’t have lent so much repetoir from Rotterdam.
IMHO: Ashholes everywhere.
What the actual fuck?
And this justifies violence against them? Boy, do I have some bad news for college protestors, then…
When the perpetrators plot a “Jew Hunt” in advance on Maccabi fans doing anything.
After Charlottesville, seeing the reaction to that clear display of antisemitism, I had hope. Maybe there are actually those who will take a stand against antisemitism, nowadays.
This thread has made me realize that this is untrue. Progressives didn’t oppose the Charlottesville Nazis because they were antisemitic; they opposed them because they were right wingers, and accusations of antisemitism are a convenient tool to attack them with, because they genuinely are antisemitic.
And now, people on the right screaming about Muslim immigrants aren’t doing so out of a concern for Jews, either; they’re doing it because they hate Muslim immigrants anyways, and once again, antisemitism is a convenient accusation to hurl.
Neither side actually gives a flying fuck about Jews being attacked.
Moderating:
This is one of the most deliberately provocative and nasty statements I’ve ever seen since I’ve been a Moderator. For it, you’re receiving a formal Warning for being a jerk.
You can state your opinions, but learn to do it with some respect.
Both teams should lose their names, for being vile hooligans. Declare a zero tolerance policy and force change starting with names.
Each demonstrated the fans are not mature enough to manage such provocative names.
The core problem is societal wide acceptance of violence as, ‘just football hooliganism, comes with the game!’
This is unfair. The Dutch government is taking it seriously. Most of the media is taking it seriously. And it’s not even particularly bad compared to other football related violence. I remember Russian hooligans were targeting England fans in France a few years ago and beating the shit out of any they could find. It wasn’t rival groups of hooligans (most of the English ones already had their passports confiscated); the Russians were attacking anyone in an England shirt, often with weapons. I think one guy died.
But this event is dangerous because of the motive, which has the potential for violence to spread outside of the targeted Maccabi supporters to other Jews. But it hasn’t so far. I think you’d see a lot more support on this board if it did.
And the world is not divided between extreme progressives and the far right. Some of the former have gone all in on supporting Palestine to the detriment of their judgement, but the majority of people in both Europe and America have not.
Seems ‘enemy of my enemy’ is good enough for the Israeli government. Though tbf the latter has members that make Wilders look moderate…
The Amsterdam Jew Hunt continued into a third night despite all Maccabi fans being evacuated to Israel 24 hours earlier, and has now spread to Stockholm as well.
The fiction that this was ever about soccer hooligans is becoming increasingly ridiculous, and anyone who is still maintaining it is complicit.
Zero criminal charges filed
Violence still ongoing
No reversal of the policy allowing police with “moral objections to protecting Jews” to opt out
Continued two-tier policing where certain populations are simply not subject to the law
They’re taking the need to hold press conferences seriously but they’re not willing to actually confront the problem.
Just curious. Is it possible for an event to start out as one thing and then morph into something else?
Like how a protest can turn into a riot.
No.
I was surprised to read this as I’ve heard nothing whatsoever in any news. And I don’t know what you think you are seeing in that short clip. I see police detaining one person. I hear people jeering, and it’s hard to make out what anyone is saying. I see one person with a Palestinian flag in their back.The brief text says that one Pro-Palestinian activist burnt an Israel flag.
I repeat, there is not a single mention of this in any of the national newspapers, nothing on the public service websites.
There was some sort of incident last year. Maybe the footage was from then…Even if this is a flag burning this year, it’s not in any way comparable to what happened in Amsterdam.
Is a minor incident like this a bellwether of something worse?
Maybe, but we’re on our toes here in Sweden. The enormous influx of Muslim immigrants during the past 25 years has created a lot of tension. Most of it is anti Muslim. Infact, last week a free speech troll was sentenced to four months jail time for publically burning a Qurran wrapped in bacon. It’s been appealed nad I’m certain that it will be overturned. Free speech laws are very strong here•.
And many Muslims feel marginalized and as people in general are wont, they look for someone to blame. Take a wild guess on who?
So that means that things are not fine and dandy for the Jewish population. Anti-semitism is always lurking beneath the surface, ready to pounce when an opportunity arises. A prominent local civic leader for the Jewish community in my hometown recently published this opinion piece I think this is a salient part (auto translated by Google):
In the Jewish Central Council’s survey as well as in our interviews, it appears that almost all of the participants avoid openly showing their Jewishness. They remove or hide Jewish symbols and actively avoid contexts where Jewish or Israeli themes might come up.
One naturally avoids talking about Jewish topics in public places, buses, trains or taxis. Speaking Hebrew is unthinkable. The children are urged to the same avoidance behavior as well as to always leave situations where conflicts are discussed. Teachers are contacted so that Jewish subjects and/or the conflict are not brought up. My grandmother’s careful remark that “it’s nice to be Jewish, but you don’t have to talk about it” has been actualized on a level that the 30s probably won’t be behind.
But there were no riots or ‘Jew hunting’ in Stockholm on Kristallnacht this year. If so, there was a total media blackout to hide it.
•One of the reasons Assange was here in 2010
Are things really so bad? That’s much more worrying than a single incident. Everyone should be worried if governments can’t or won’t defend their citizens.
He would never even have been charged in the US. The truth is politicians and police are afraid too, they’d rather arrest people for ‘provoking violence’ by their speech than arrest those committing it. IMO the biggest risk of antisemitism is not that governments don’t care, but that they are too cowardly to do enough to stop it.
Yes, that’s honestly more alarming that whatever just happened in the Netherlands.
It’s an OP-ED but as far as I know, it’s not very hyperbolic. A former colleague mentioned about five years ago that she’d stopped wearing her David’s star necklace. Being a teacher in a public HS with quite a lot of kids to Muslim immigrants has some c hallenges.
As far back as during the Obama administration (2015) Ira Forman was here as U.S. special envoy to monitor Anti-Semitism. As for what the government is doing. I want to say that they’re doing as much as possible. But it’s hard to police snide remarks, accusing glances, swastikas graffitied on dark nights. All of which are horrible and contribute to the unease and sense of danger.
With that said, a prominent politician voiced the opinion last week that a person with residency - not citizenship - who voiced Anti-zionist opinions, should be deported. This is in the wake of the many Pro-Palestine protests where jeers Arabic celebrating Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as a the destruction of Israel has been voiced, under guise of ‘peaceful protests.’ Thankfully, some Arab speakers have been documenting all and translations have been made.
Coupled with this
Where’s the line between free speech and hate speech? This was the lowest level court, where judgment is passed by laymen/women. The appeals court are professional lawyers who tend to not be swayed as much by politicians and public opinion.
Not related to this, but regarding free speech, was a case around 2010 which went to the supreme court and the guy was acquitted. It was a Pentecostal pastor that, in a broadcasted sermon, said that “homosexuals are a cancer growth in society.” He was sentenced in the low circuit, acquitted in appeal which was then held up by the highest court.That gave courts a baseline for what was permitted and not hate speech.
I know Jehoshua Kaufman thinks LEO and politicians are not doing enough, hence his OP-ED. But I don’t know what more is to be done.
Belgian police have arrested five suspects who were plotting to spread the Jew Hunt movement to Antwerp.
This is on the heels of Belgium admitting it could not properly provide security from pro-Hamas demonstrators and refusing to host a soccer match involving the Israeli national team (not Maccabi TA) in June.
Thank you for your on the ground perspective from Sweden, both for providing more information about the alleged incident there and broader background that is indeed far more concerning. Pretty terrifying, actually.
Yeah… That’s a big issue. Same thing with free speech vs misinformation (or disinformation).
It’s like the paradox of tolerance. It reminds one of the quote from Goebbels about how democracy gave its enemies the very means they used to destroy democracy.
Haven’t you looked at the posts by gracer with links? Here’s a Dutch police liveblog with descriptions of the incidents, including Maccabi supporters on Wednesday night tearing down a Palestinian flag, burning a Palestinian flag, and destroying a taxi.
Of course none of that behavior excuses unprovoked attacks on Maccabi supporters, nor does it excuse antisemitic insults and intimidation. But it seems pretty clear that gross and hateful football hooliganism on both sides exploited political tensions for its rhetoric.
Burning a Palestinian flag and chanting stuff about “school is out in Gaza because there are no more children left”, for example, IMHO pretty clearly disqualifies the participants from being nothing but innocent victims of an antisemitic “pogrom”.
Of course, the Telegram posts planning out a Jew Hunt happened before any Maccabi fans burned a flag. And if some Jewish Americans went out on a Muslim Hunt and beat Muslims who had nothing to do with protests in response to protestors burning an Israeli flag or chanting about removing all the Jews from the river to the sea, you’d have no problem calling that out in a microsecond.
@Kimstu had no trouble calling out the antisemitic behavior in this incident either:
Recognizing that there was shitty behavior from some of the anti-Muslims is not the same thing as excusing the antisemites.
Culture is so important and very neglected. Laws are blunt instruments, and a constitution worth nothing if leaders are allowed to ignore it. For too many years politicians in Europe have assumed that immigrants would simply adopt the culture and values of their new countries, and no thought or effort was required. It’s increasingly clear how wrong this was.
We were supposed to have learned from the past; it’s incredibly disappointing to see European countries becoming unsafe for Jews (again).
When you bring up the shitty behavior any time some mentions what happened to people who didn’t even participate in that behavior, it gives some real “All Lives Matter” vibes.